The Damned
by xxskyWriterxx
Summary: The Rowdyruff Boys start a new life as the only living residents in the realm of the dead, following the destruction of all living things on planet Earth. Hell proves to be much different then they expected. No pairings.
1. Coca Cola

The bedroom that Brick shared with his brothers looked like that of any other sixteen-year-old: it had a red carpet because Brick had demanded it, it had three twin beds because the brothers refused to share their old king-sized one anymore, it had a plasma flat screen for amusement, a desk for God-knows-what, a few lamps, a table, three bean-bag chairs, and heaps upon heaps of garbage.

The Boys didn't care. Neither did Him, and neither did Mojo Jojo. And, being the only living residents of Hell, theirs were the opinions that mattered.

Brick scarfed down the last of his banana, tossing the peel into the chasm and wiping his chin on his sleeve. As the speck of yellow vanished into the pit's eerie maw, something stirred from deep down within it. Awakening.

The air crawled.

The hellfires slithered.

The darkness ached with thousands of anguished groans.

"Shut **up**!" hollered all three Rowdyruff Boys, and the spirits hissed back into silence.

"Do they have to do that _every_ time?" Boomer whined, Cheetos dribbling from his lips.

"Stupid jerkasses," Butch growled through a mouthful of hamburger.

"You'd think the **Devil himself** would be able to shut them up, wouldn't you?" Brick said, snatching up a Coke and guzzling it.

"Yo, that's mine!" Butch suddenly cried, glaring daggers at his redheaded brother.

Brick shrugged and Butch seethed.

Eyes flaring, Butch ripped the can from his brother's hands and lobbed it up into the air. The Boys watched in silence as the can arced above them and plunged deep into the chasm's jaws, disappearing far out of sight. Boomer and Brick looked at clambered to the edge of their island of a bedroom and peered down into the ocean of blackness surrounding it, their eyes searching for a glimpse of the can even though they knew from experience exactly what would happen.

There was silence.

Then, there was cacophony.

The darkness exploded with whispering. Moaning. Crying. Shrieking. It was as if the Coca Cola had incinerated the spirits' very souls. The air twisted and trembled with the sound, practically threatening to burst. It was louder than ever before. A glacial shill shivered through the Boys' bones, rattling their eardrums and throbbing in their lungs. They were paralyzed. All they could do was sit and stare at one another, until suddenly their fear was blown into smithereens.

Brick was laughing.

Head over heels and doubled up, he clutched his sides and choked with mirth, his mane of red hair flinging around him in a scraggly blaze. Butch and Boomer sniggered. The gleeful roar of the three brothers drowned even the spirits' most desperate cries. It was as if they were five years old, all over again.

"Dude!" howled Butch, turning to Brick with twinkling eyes. "That was an AWESOME one!"

"**Word**," said Brick in his sixteen-year-old velvety tones.

Boomer tried to speak but found himself completely devoid of breath. He chuckled and wheezed while his brothers cackled.

"But what if somebody hears us or something?" Boomer finally managed, his sapphire eyes flitting over the other island-rooms bobbing like lanterns in the dark.

"Who th' hell cares?" Butch snickered, thumping his brother on the back and then grabbing hold of another Coke. "We've done this a million times and if even if somebody DID notice it, they obviously don't give a shit. And neither do I."

Brick hovering over him in anticipation, Butch popped the top of the can and dumped its sparkling contents, the stream of soda trickling down into the hell-mouth below.

Spirits shrieked and hilarity resumed.


	2. The Den of Souls

Hell was composed of a cluster of island-rooms, suspended in the pit of the chasm like glimmering pools of light. The Rowdyruff Boy's room was simply one of the dozens buoying in the abyss: there was a tiled and gleaming kitchen, several bathrooms, a dining room that always stood vacant, the laboratory from which Mojo Jojo rarely ever emerged, the living room with the shudder-worthy fuchsia carpeting, the 'front yard' filled with grass and the trickle of the fountain…

Brick had lost count of all of the rooms, despite having lived in Eternal Damnation for eleven long years. He had a TV. He had a bed. He had his comics. He had his stereo. He didn't need anything more.

"Yo, Red-" Butch muttered to Brick, his eyes fixed on the TV and his face paled by the screen's flashing gleam. "Hand me a Coke, will ya?"

"Get off your lazy ass and get it yourself."

Butch didn't reply, shoveling his popcorn but missing his mouth as he did. Puffs of corn rolled off of his cheeks and tumbled like clouds onto the carpet.

Clouds.

It had been so long since Brick had seen a cloud.

"And I just remembered," continued Brick, slapping on his signature red baseball cap and huffing. "We're all out of it anyways, bonehead. You fed it all to the friggin' spirits."

"Yeh," sneered Butch, a smirk spreading over his face. "And they sure LOVED it, didn't they?"

"Drunk it all the way up!" piped Boomer, catching Butch's eye and beaming. Boomer and Butch knocked triumphant fists and turned back to the TV. Brick rolled his eyes and leaned away, dragging himself upright like a vampire from the grave.

"I'm leaving."

"Okay," said Boomer.

"Whatever," mumbled Butch. "Come back with th' Coke."

Brick gathered himself and shot out of the room, his ribbon of scarlet spearing the black chasm of Hell. After he had ascended above the highest of the island-rooms (the living room), Brick slowed into a downward drift, sinking silently past the 'house' and past his own bedroom, his superhearing catching the passing garble of the TV as he fell. He didn't want his brothers to know where he was headed. He didn't want anyone to know where he was headed.

Brick kept his eyes locked on his sneakers as he sank, the dark clogging in his throat as the pools of light slid up and out of his field of vision. Only remnants of their glow remained, tiny stars glittering from far above him. He could no longer see his hands in the dark in front of him. Locks of his long hair fluttered up by his face, tickling his skin.

_I should really get that shit cut_, Brick thought, practically sniggering as the idea passed through his brain. He'd been saying that ever since he'd been reborn here, over a decade ago. His hair had only grown longer since then.

Up above his head, the remaining pinpricks of light began to wink out, choked by the expanding flow of shadow towering over him as he fell. Brick puffed into his palm, his breath flickering on his hands and sparking into a tiny flame that threw trembling shadows into the gloom around him. He felt touches of heat on his cheeks and on the soles of his feet, heat radiating from a fire much larger than the one that he clutched in his own small fist. He had to be close.

He was right.

A few yards beneath him Brick caught a glimpse of the murky ground, a patch of it touched with the golden glow of his flame. He planted his sneakers onto the solid surface, ashes billowing at his feet as he righted himself and peered into the blackness, holding his tiny fire aloft. A blackened wasteland stretched before him, the warped stone hills tumbled with piles of stones and carpeted with cinders that swirled as he tread over them. Hellfire blazed in the distance. The cries of the damned pierced the shroud of silence. Brick strode until he found himself standing in the middle of the hellfire's angry maw, his forehead glistening as he squeezed his own speck of a flame into smoke.

There was already plenty of fire to go around.

Brick was surrounded by agony, the souls of Earth howling as they twisted in the mighty inferno, flames licking hungrily at them in their struggle. The tortured shadows flocked around him, circling his waist and hovering over his shoulders and flitting through his ponytail. They clouded in his face, moaning as though they were begging for salvation. He couldn't offer it to them and neither did he care. He wasn't here for _them_ anyways.

He pressed ahead, hovering over the heaps of roasting embers and rotting souls as he entered the core of Hell. Squinting through the pulsing radiance, Brick distinguished three particular souls that were walled away from all the others by a curtain of magma. The lava rumbled like earth as he marched on through, the fiery cascade parting over his head to grant his passage. Once he was inside the heart of the Den, the three souls quieted at once, their screams subsiding into a throbbing silence. He could almost feel their nonexistent eyes tracing his every move. They bobbed in the air before him, barely shadows, cinders twinkling at their feet and magma writhing all about them—the most egregious of punishments.

Brick's bloody irises flared as he stared at them. He wondered vaguely how old they'd be if they were still alive.

_Sixteen…just like us._

He couldn't picture them as sixteen-year-olds, no matter how far he stretched what little imagination that he had. In his mind they would remain forever kindergarteners, their youth preserved in his memory and in the high-pitched screams that usually came pouring from their chamber.

But now they were utterly silent.

Staring.

Staring at **him**.

A shiver racked his spine and he turned away from them, his temples pounding with fury.

"Goddamned Powerpuff Girls…" Brick snarled, the unholy quiet dragging after him even as he stomped away.


	3. The Chasm

A tongue of hellfire spurted from underneath the scarlet rug, only to be stomped into oblivion by a black sneaker. A dying puff of smoke wafted across Brick's face as he ground his heel into the floor, smothering every last cinder. Annoyance flaring up in the pit of his stomach, he tore off the singed sneaker without looking at it and flung it away, barely even sparing it a glance as it was swallowed by the omnipresent darkness lurking at his feet.

_That's the fourth one today_, thought Brick, grumbling and turning away from the chasm yawning around his island of a bedroom. As magnificent as living in Hell could be, he couldn't deny that it certainly had its downsides. The stupid hellfire was one of them.

"Why don't _you_ morons ever douse the goddamned flames?" growled Brick, waves of anger practically boiling off of him as he leapt off of the bed and stalked over to the closet, ripping through mountains of dirty socks and garbage in search of a replacement shoe. "It's not just _my_ stupid bedroom, you know."

"Busy," muttered Butch in his gravely voice, giving his magazine a telltale shake, the glow from the nearby lamp glimmering in his gelled spikes.

Boomer, however, didn't utter a word. His gaze slid into the chasm and quickly retreated, a splash of terror blanching his face. Brick didn't miss it. Brick never missed anything.

Brick tossed his ponytail and sneered, stomping over to his blonde brother with all the finesse of a thunderhead, looming like a skyscraper over him.

"You're still scared of that goddamned _hole_?" Brick snapped as Boomer looked guiltily away. "We've been in this room for over a _decade_ and you're still scared of that goddamned **hole**?"

"I'm not scared!" Boomer protested, his scratchy voice tightening in his throat. Unconvinced, Brick glowered down at his brother, his irises blazing like magma. And then, just as if he had been doused with a blizzard, Brick's glare seemed to freeze over, his eyes smoldering and his mouth twisting into a crooked smirk.

"I believe you," he said, shrugging warmly but speaking in a voice encrusted with ice. A spark of relief briefly illuminated Boomer's features before perishing like the flame beneath Brick's heel.

"No you don't," Boomer murmured, shame sagging in his stomach like a ten-ton glacier.

Brick's eyebrows arched in mock surprise.

"You must be getting better, then, Blondie," he jeered, his face still swelled in a cocky grin. "I didn't even think you could blink and breathe at the same time."

Boomer scowled at his brother and turned away, his lip curled indignantly and his arms folded tight.

"Get off his case, Brick," Butch cut across, his forest green eyes snapping up from the magazine in his lap. "What th' hell's yer problem, anyways?"

"Like you're the one to talk, pyscho brains!" snarled Brick, turning on his heel. "Shut the hell up!"

"_You_ shut the hell up!"

"Don't you even **try** to push me around, bonehead!"

"Go to hell."

A snort of derisive laughter burst from Brick's lips.

"I'd love to, bonehead, but seeing as I'm already _there_—"

"Whatever." Butch looked away, lifting his magazine in his lap and leafing through the pages. "Yer not worth my time."

"Your time ain't worth diddly-squat."

Butch offered nothing but a shrug. Brick simmered with his volcanic fumes and hurled out a barrage of half-baked curses. A thing like a shadow drifted up from the chasm and moaned passed Brick's shoulder, drenching his skin in arctic cold.

"Shut up," spat Brick, shooing it away. The souls, the hellfire, the darkness: Brick was frankly quite sick of it all. The chasm stretched before him and for a moment he felt completely and utterly useless.


End file.
